From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 short films created by Gazans under siege, was notably absent from the 2024 Cannes film festival, after it was controversially removed from the programme.
The films, curated by the Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi – who screened the collection on the Croisette anyway, in protest – vary in length and tone. Some are frontline reportage, some are fiction and others blur the line between categories.
In Soft Skin, refugee children draw and cut coloured cards to create a stop-motion animation; they also show where their mothers have inked their names across their limbs, in case of dismemberment. Other children make dance videos, stage musical numbers and arrange pots and pans to improvise a drum kit.
Fragments reveal displaced lives. One woman thinks about a cherished book she left behind as she fled from home; a young man misses the pillow and blankets he didn’t have time to pack.
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In The Teacher, a professor unsuccessfully queues for bread, water and a phone-charging outlet. The hum of drones and aircraft is seldom far away; a youngster traumatised by bombardment uses her headphones to drown out the sound.
An attempt at scripted film-making is interrupted. E’temad Weshah, the director of Taxi Waneesa, cuts her story short and appears on camera to explain that after the loss of her brother and his family, she couldn’t continue with her project. Ahmed Hassouna, another director, burns his clapperboard for firewood.
Many chapters feature journeys to ruined homes. A sculptor finds her art works destroyed. A boy carries textbooks to a school that no longer exists.
Cohesion is tenuous in Palestine’s official entry for this year’s Oscars, but that mirrors the chaos and unrest of life in Gaza. Forming a Greek chorus, the films are only as disjointed as their context: the obliteration of normal life and the stubborn, miraculous act of carrying on.
On limited cinema release from Friday, September 12th
